Hacker News Reader

Comment by mentalpiracy | Hacker News Reader

Putting the sulfur back into the fuel is maybe the single most effective thing we can do for the planet right now. Yes, polluting is bad and indirectly harms millions over time — but ocean heat spiking will directly harm billions imminently.

I acknowledge that the phrase “put it back” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There is no ctrl+z for the fuel manufacturing processes that were changed to accommodate the sulfur ban, but this is such a recent change that there is still an enormous amount of direct subject matter expertise available for a crash-restart. Course correction here, now provides runway for the future.

The industrial capacity of worldwide maritime shipping already exists _and_ is already internationally regulated. There is no other “safer” alternative that could be implemented as quickly, or with less risk.

View on HN

If we’re going to go back to geoengineering the atmosphere there are probably much less harmful ways to do it.

I believe there’s a solution where ships just spray sea water into the atmosphere.

There are less harmful ways to accomplish it theoretically, but exactly zero of those methods are as industrialized - or as regulated - on the same scale as the international maritime shipping industry that already exists.

Put the sulfur back in now so we have a few additional years to mobilize a safer replacement.

This is a completely insane take on this.

Akin to saying "You pulled the knife out of my torso, and now I'm bleeding more! Put it back!"

Putting it back will certainly cause more harm than just leaving it out.

Your analogy is flawed because knife wound was the original problem that would be exacerbatedby reinsertion.

A better analogy would be having some infection that's somehow preventing a cancer from metastasis - you treat the infection and now you see the cancer spike. Worth risking reinfection to slow down cancer ? Depends on how bad the infection/cancer is I guess.

Once the knife is out, however, you don’t win points for putting it back in.

But that's why the analogy is flawed - it's dealing with a single problem that gets clearly worse by the action.

Global warming and sulphur pollution are two separate (but realated) problems - it's possible that by making one worse you make the other better - and then it's a cost/benefit calculation.

Eg. chemotherapy is destroying a lot of your body - but it also kills cancer.

> Global warming and sulphur pollution are two separate (but realated) problems - it's possible that by making one worse you make the other better - and then it's a cost/benefit calculation

Sure. But I'd argue the case is being made for active cloud seeding. Versus random seeding with commercial vessels with sulphur.

Restoring sulphur in ship fuel would sap the mainline argument of a lot of strength. If the ships can have their sulphur back, why not every industry their [insert ask]. It won't be scientifically valid. But it would win a decade of inaction.

Your failure to understand that the knife remaining in your body is, in fact, going to keep you alive longer than if you pulled it out is exactly the problem.

Leaving the knife in hurts like hell, but maybe it’ll kill you slow enough that you’ll be able to find help before you die.

Pulling out the knife seems right but just means you bleed out quickly.

> Your failure to understand that the knife remaining in your body is, in fact, going to keep you alive longer than if you pulled it out is exactly the problem.

I don’t know why you assume I’m failing to understand that. I’m saying it’s already happened, so here we are.

You should never pull out a knife until you’re ready to stop the bleeding that will follow.

Well the knife has already been pulled, and they are suggesting stabbing it back in.

I believe that using the fuel with lower sulfur required ships to be modified. If I'm right about that then, as you say, it would not just be a case of ctrl+z the manufacturing but also require changes to ships.

Yes, you’re right. There are certainly other aspects that would require change too.

But the point is the same: we only transitioned recently, so going back is a known quantity - and now we know exactly how it will impact the worldwide climate. Do any other current geoengineering projects have a directly tangible blueprint?

Assuming the positives outweigh the negatives. You can't release tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere without causing acid rain and speeding up ocean acidification.

Plenty of countries I drove through in Africa have over 2000 parts per million sulphur in their diesel - just use their refineries.

Check the last page - https://sustmob.org/PCFV/GlobalSulphurStatus_Progress2006-20...

It doesn't sound like much lifting compared to huge cannons that launch sulfur shells into the upper atmosphere!

Yeah... we kind of already have billions of machines efficiently spreading it all over the globe.

> ”Putting the sulfur back into the fuel is maybe the single most effective thing we can do for the planet right now”

This would be incredibly idiotic for so many reasons. You’d be condemning millions of people to suffering with crippling respiratory diseases, and harming countless aquatic and coastal ecosystems. All for a relatively modest gain against global heating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com